Colby is a designer, illustrator, dungeon master for hire, and Art Director of Print Innovation for Magic: The Gathering at Wizards of the Coast. So, besides my partner Meg, Colby is the closest thing to a Wizard I've ever met. lol. Anyway, before joining Wizards, he was a Creative Director and Co-Founder of Jolby, a design and illustration studio he started with his best friend Josh Kenyon. After 12 long years at Jolby, he decided to step away to rediscover his "why" and realized he was spending most of his time writing and playing tabletop games, which convinced him to pursue a role at Wizards. However, long before becoming a professional dork, Colby drew characters from Nintendo Power Magazine like Link from The Legend of Zelda, popped his first pack of Magic cards in 1995, and wanted to be a Sunday morning comic strip artist when he was a kid. Fast-forward through hundreds of D&D sessions, therapeutic Post-It notes, and video games, and Colby has partnered with Nike, Pixar, Nickelodeon, Google, and many other impressive clients throughout his career. He lives by the "Rule of Cool," knows how to "Ride the Weird," and self-published his own light-hearted gothic "Karma Crawl" called Chadwick and the Southern Scourge. Tune in for a talk about following his passion for storytelling and tabletop games, why he stepped away from a design studio he co-founded, and how playing D&D can help you become a better creative professional. Worst case, you get to hear us be reasonably cool-sounding dorks! Follow Colby on Instagram @colbynichols, and check out more of his work on his website: colbyhichols.com. “You’re gonna need good people way more than you’re gonna need good talent.”

Tyler is a creative leader, art director, and illustrator born "in the sticks" of South Carolina and now based in Los Angeles. You might be familiar with his personal brand, The Creative Pain, an outlet that he uses to process the hurdles, burnout, and doubt that come with the creative journey. Luckily, Tyler grew up with his cousin, Darby, and they competitively pushed each other's creativity. Obsessed with skateboarding culture, Tyler collected graphics and stickers, and even made his own skateboarding wax without burning the house down. Lol. Like most creative professionals, he studied design in college, Francis Marion University in his case, and he's taken risks throughout his career, like leaving a full-time agency job to move across the country and become a full-time freelancer. His work is full of illustrations of donuts, 90s cartoon characters, and his dog, Iggy, and he's partnered with Adobe, Wacom, POSCA, and StickerApp. Tyler has also created artwork for The Black Keys, Jack White, and Paul McCartney, and he's no stranger to the corporate design world, having worked as an art director on Nickelodeon's consumer products team. At Nickelodeon, he created product guides for some of the network's biggest IPs, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Tune in for a talk about growing up in a town of 750 people, learning to look at design through a consumer-product lens, corporate design misconceptions, and the difference between isometric, dimetric, and trimetric perspectives. Follow Tyler on Instagram @thecreativepain, and check out more of his work on his website: thecreativepain.com. “There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.”

Blake is a designer and art director in Minneapolis with over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of brand strategy and identity. He's the most heavily tattooed person I've interviewed, and he literally traveled across the world to Australia to get tattooed by one of his tattoo heroes—RESPECT. After growing up with computer games, doing kickflips, and helping his grandfather tap trees for maple syrup, he studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. After college, he found himself working in corporate packaging design, and a year later, he took a calculated risk by leaving his full-time job for a design internship at Sussner, a branding firm in Minneapolis. Like us, Blake's been through burnout, low-paying gigs, and he's sacrificed more of himself along the way than he realized. Thankfully, he has a portfolio of strategic design work that helps offset those sacrifices. Blake's stepfather is a tattoo artist, so tattoos have always been a part of his life, and they are quite literally THE reason he pursued graphic design—more on that in the interview. Tune in for a talk about Crop Conference, the benefits of using Framer vs. Squarespace to build your portfolio, takeaways from designing brand identities for private clubs and golf courses, and the story behind a logo he designed for a former mobster. Follow Blake on Instagram @blakespiegel and check out his Framer website spiegeldesign.co. "Deep down, we're all just a bunch of bones. What really makes us different is what we do with them."

Dora is the Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director of Hybrid Design in San Francisco, and the Co-Founder of Super7. Over the past 25 years, her studio has worked with some of the most recognizable brands on the planet, including Nike, Apple, Google, YouTube, LEGO, Amazon, TED Conference, The North Face, and many more. Interesting, it all almost didn't happen because she originally chose to study film instead of design at The University of North Texas. Luckily, she met her husband Brian, was exposed to the world of graphic design, and switched her major. I'm glad she did, or else I wouldn't be holding a copy of her studio's monograph, Hybrid: Curiosity in All Things. It's an absolutely beautiful book, filled with amazing work, insights, behind-the-scenes content, and the purpose and inspiration behind everything they do. It's so packed with thoughtful material that it made the interview prep MORE difficult, not easier, because there's SO much amazing work to discuss. Dora has many influences, like Charles and Ray Eames, punk rock, Swiss design, Star Wars, and so much more. Hell, she even listens to Slayer while driving her kids to school, lol. However, one of my favorite things about Dora is that her approach to creativity and her work sits at the intersection of design, content, and culture, guided by the belief that curiosity and play are essential tools for solving real business problems. Tune in for a talk about collecting junk mail, why curiosity is an organizing principle for Hybrid, grid "mathemagic", and why working for Nike in the mid-90s was such a special time in her career. Follow Hybrid Design on IG @hybriddesignsf, and check out more of their work on their website hybrid-design.com, and buy a copy of Hybrid: Curiosity in All Things from viction:ary or your local bookstore. "All projects change. All projects are fluid. All problems are different. Asking questions is the only way forward."

Martina Flor is an award-winning lettering artist, author, and educator living in Berlin. She also hosts the Open Studio podcast with over 200 episodes, and she's spoken at over 70 conferences across the globe, including TEDx, Adobe MAX, TypeCon, and many others. She's a lettering POWERHOUSE and has helped thousands of creative entrepreneurs become lettering artists and take their creative businesses to the next level. However, she wasn't always the super-confident person she is today, and it's taken her over a decade to fine-tune her creative business. Way before specializing in lettering, she was a creative director, but eventually hit a breaking point and needed a change in her life. So, she moved to the Netherlands to study type design at the Royal Academy of Art, and moved to Berlin after graduating. There, she started calling herself a lettering artist, joined a group of typographic aficionados, opened her lettering studio, and hasn't looked back since. Martina's an avid reader; in fact, she's written many of her own books, like The Golden Secrets of Lettering, The Big Leap, and Make It! Her favorite letter to draw is "M," and she can tell you all about the 3 main groups of letters: rectangular, rounded, and triangular. Like so many of us, she thrives within constraints and believes that no brief is the worst brief. Tune in for a talk about why an email list is the most powerful asset for a creative business, how trying to become Ken Barber helped her discover herself, and why printing a set of new business cards changed her life. Follow Martina on Instagram @martinaflor, download free lettering resources on her website: martinaflor.com, and sign up for her FREE annual workshop series, The Lettering Design Roadmap, at martinaflor.com/masterclass. "If not now, then when?"

Deja is the Founder and Creative Director of Dejamakes Creative Studio in Chicago. Her focus is on the brand and web design, and she primarily works with small business owners and founders who've DIY'd themselves into oblivion and have realized they're ready for a brand experience that combines strategy and storytelling. But before starting her career in sports advertising and eventually working for her dream company, Twitter, Deja played D1 basketball for the University of Pennsylvania, so she's a hooper, y'all, don't get it twisted. Since evolving from an athlete to a designer and saying "peace out" to Elon and Twitter, she binged-watched everything on Bravo (shoutout to Dorinda Medley lol) and is out there making things happen on her own. Between lattes and walks with her dog, Goose, she's crafting thoughtful brand identity systems, wedding invitations, and short-form content to help you get to the next level. Tune in for a talk about how a "fork in the road" led to her decision to leave the corporate girly life behind, how saying yes to design changed everything, and how she measures progress and success for her design studio. Follow Deja on Instagram @dejamakes, and check out more of her work on her website: dejamakes.com. Remember. Quality over quantity, and the numbers don't lie.

Tad is an illustrator, designer, author, and self-proclaimed BBQ snob from Kansas City. He co-runs a design and branding studio with his wife Jessica called Carpenter Collective. Their team has worked with companies like Macy's, Publix, Adobe, Hallmark, Coca-Cola, and MTV, among others. You've likely seen some of the illustrations from his SUNday Suns series, and if you've heard his Midwest vernacular, you might know the meaning of "Ope," "Alrighty, well," and "All good, no worries." His father, a Creative Director at Hallmark International for 41.5 years, is his biggest inspiration, and his mother is also an artist who works with fiber, so it's safe to say Tad would probably have been thrown out of the family if he hadn't pursued a creative career, lol. On a lighter note, he loves photos and videos of dogs driving cars; he believes the sausage biscuit is one of the most fantastic fast-food items ever created, and he won a drawing contest for season tickets to the Kansas City Chiefs when he was in the 3rd grade. Tune in for a talk about Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, why he thinks you should work for someone before working for yourself, his studio's ping-pong approach to design, and the gigantic hole left behind after completing his SUNday Suns series. Follow Tad on Instagram @tadcarpenter and @carpentercollective, and buy his book, SUNday Suns, art prints, and gig posters on his website carpentercollective.com. "Happiness is not a function of what you achieve. It's a function of how you spend your time."

Ram, aka Oversettext, is a graphic designer and content creator in Fresno, California. Shoutout: Lucena. He's probably best known for his 365 project; he designed one poster a day for an entire year. However, I discovered him through his "You know what font that is?" videos on Instagram. He loves Futura Condensed Bold, like LOVES, and he's an advocate for our rights to use Comic Sans without career-ending judgment. Fun Fact: Way before Ram designed vinyl album packaging for Kings of Leon, he worked for a newspaper called The RAMpage. Shoutout: Dympna and FCC. I know, it sounds made up, but it's true. It's as true as his recommendation to start listening to Alan Watts's lectures, and his current beef with illustrations of characters with rubberhose arms and legs. It's even as true as the fact that Ram will be a presenter at Crop in 2026. Get your ticket at cropcons.com. But, fr. What I respect most about Ram's work is the messaging behind it. The best way to experience it is to scroll through all 365 of the posters he designed from 2021 to 2022. You'll find an Air link to all 365 posters in his linktree. Some of my favorites are No. 204, 254, 263, 296, 302, 336, 349. UGH, there are too many to list. Seriously, go check them out. Tune in for a talk about how much "fixing" other people's designs sucks, what he learned from his 365 project, and the weight of responsibility from over 250,000 social media followers. Follow Ram on Instagram @oversettext, watch his videos on YouTube, and buy a shirt on oversettext.com.

Jen is a Nashville-based independent type designer and resource creator for creative business owners. You might be familiar with some of her best-selling typefaces, like Perfectly Nineties, Editor's Note, and Founder's Hand. However, long before her formal education in type design from Type@Cooper, Jen got her start on Creative Market. She created and uploaded font after font, even though she didn't know the rules and guidelines of type design. The best part is IT WORKED, because people bought and used her fonts, and that was enough to inspire her to keep doing it. Surprisingly, Jen only wanted to make enough money to pay her water bill and eat at Chipotle once a week. But now, brands like Sprouts, Victoria's Secret, Kohl's, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sweetgreen are using her typefaces. She's come a long way from wanting to be an orthopedic surgeon in Colorado; her love for type design has gone from hobby to career, and she's LITERALLY sold a digital product every single day of this year. Tune in for a talk about getting started on Creative Market, her struggles with tying her self-worth to her income, and finding the balance between making type that's accessible for everyone and becoming a world-class type foundry. Follow Jen on Instagram @jenwagnertype, and explore her typefaces on her website jenwagner.co. If you sign up for her email list, you'll get 20% off your first order!

James is an author, type designer, and the founder of OHno Type Company, a digital type foundry based in San Jose, California. You might license some of his wildly imaginative fonts, including Beastly, Ohno Fatface, Degular, Polymath, Regrets, Obviously, and Hobeaux. Before he got his start in the bowels of graphic design, James studied design at California College of the Arts. Then he learned how to cast typographic spells while attending the Hogwarts of type design, AKA Type Media at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague, Netherlands. James is also an educator and a podcaster—check out his podcast, Ohno Radio—and swears that Canson marker paper is holy in the world of sketching. If you geek out over naming, you'll be excited to learn that James almost named his foundry "The Spaghetti Factory" or "The American International Type Company." I don't know how to make those options make sense, but hey, man, back OFF, Life's a Thrill, and Fonts Are Chill. Tune in for a talk about James's number one rule of letterspacing, his father's love for toasters, and the dominance of low-contrast sans-serif typefaces. Follow James on Instagram @ohnotypeco, purchase his fonts on his website ohnotype.co, or add them on Adobe Fonts, and read this blog post if you want to get started in type design. THEN, read his book, The Ohno Book: A Serious Guide to Irreverent Type Design, to level up even more.